Monday, June 13, 2011

Buddy And The Boys were a collective of musicians from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, that formed to record a rock opera of sorts in 1977. The theme of the album was the familiar plight of young people from Cape Breton, who were often faced with the decision to leave home in order to find work elsewhere, yet always longing to one day return home. "Buddy" was a term that they used to describe a new acquaintance so the band assumed the title as well. The Boys were Max MacDonald, Leon Dubinsky, Berkley Lamey and Ralph Dillon, who had all played together previously, in a band called Homebrew. They were joined by 20 or so other musicians from the Cape Breton musical community and recorded their debut, Buddy. One of those 20 or so musicians was Matt Minglewood. I wasn't sure what to expect when I stumbled upon this record but it is pure gold. There are some "Freebird" wailing guitars on the opening track, Turn This Train Around, that will ignite any classic rock soul. Beautiful stuff. As the story goes, the band would release one more live album in 1979 and although they had offers to move to Toronto to further their careers, they decided not to leave the Cape. Dubinsky still lives there today with his family and achieved some notoriety in the early nineties when The Rankin Family recorded his song, Rise Again. Of all the obscure albums I've blogged about, I was expecting the information search on this one to be tremendously difficult. However, there is a wonderful site dedicated to the classic rock history of Nova Scotia that exists and you can check it out at http://nsclassicrock.8m.com/. This particular album was apparently remastered and released on CD during the nineties but even those copies remain a rarity today. At the time of this blog, there were no copies available for sale online. You can hear the song, Turn This Train Around, on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-3vNzDSICA&feature=channel_video_title). Thanks for reading and enjoy!